As good as the Web is for getting information to your customers, experts agree the surest online tool is e-mail. While Web pages wait for visitors who may or may not arrive, with e-mail, your message goes directly to your audience. Plus, e-mail is cheap and easy to create. Is this spamming? Not if recipients are added by request and given the option to be removed from your list. Do it right, in other words, and readers will be delighted to get your e-mail . . . and the cost to you will be minimal.

So how do you maintain a sizable e-mail list or, better still, a list that allows breakdowns into subgroups for more targeted mailings? Eudora Pro (http://www.eudora.com) and similar e-mail programs can be configured to do this, but list management is not what they were designed to do. A better choice: EPS (Email Postal Software) from Brooklyn North Software Works. Written to handle the company's own sizable mailing lists, about the time the program was finalized, it struck the entrepreneurs who run the company that they had a market winner. Download a free trial edition at http://www.brooknorth.com